As Catholic As The Day Is Long

So, just before heading out to Kalamazoo I ordered a copy of the new Joseph Pearce documentary about J. R. R. Tolkien as a Catholic writer. Originating as an hour-long show on Catholic TV (i.e., EWTN*), this had been discussed on the MythSoc list not long before, but I decided I'd like to see it for myself and also have a reference copy. And now I do, as it arrived here the day after I got back.

Unfortunately, I found it somewhat lacking. In format it went back and forth between three modes. First, we have narration by Pearce, who's standing in some woods wearing a backpack and carrying a walking stick. Occasionally we break away to a scene in which an actor playing Tolkien (and, in one scene, a second as C. S. Lewis) looks up from his desk, recites some snippet from JRRT's letters, and puts his pipe back in his mouth. Finally, rather too often we see a still picture of a piece of Tolkien-inspired art that serves as a backdrop to a voiceover reading of some passage from THE LORD OF THE RINGS or AINULINDALE.

As with any production, there are some minor errors (Fr. John Tolkien is referred to as "a Jesuit priest"), but on the whole they've done their homework and the biographical summary is fairly solid.

It's not the facts but the interpretation where this piece falls down for me. The argument is not just that Tolkien is a Catholic writer -- a self-evident truth -- but that a Cathl0centric point of view is the only valid one through which to interpret his work. To try to build his case, Pearce resorts to heavy allegorization of the evidence. Thus he asserts that "Tolkien's Melkor is merely another name for Satan" and "merely different words for the same thing: Melkor IS Satan". The Lord of the Ring himself is "Sauron, the greatest of Satan's servants".

But thinking through the consequences of its claims is not this documentary's strong point. Instead, its blurring of Tolkien's story and orthodox Catholic doctrine produces some odd effects and distortions to both. For example, Pearce claims that March 25th (the date of the Ring's destruction) is the most important holy day in the entire Xian calendar -- which shd come as a surprise to those of us who celebrate Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter. Elsewhere, and rather bizarrely, Pearce claims The One Ring is Original Sin itself. One wd think this wd be good news -- if Original Sin got tossed into a volcano and destroyed for all time thousands of years ago at the end of the Third Age, then Satan has never been able to take physical form in historical time (Jesus must have been imagining his presence throughout the Temptation in the Wilderness of the Gospel account).

Pearce says quite bluntly at one point that a chain of allusions he constructs (Sauron > saurian > lizard-like > the Serpent in the Garden) has the effect of "rendering impossible, or at least improbable, any but a theistic interpretation of the book".

I cd not disagree more. Tolkien was a complex man. To seize upon one aspect of his life -- his medievalism, his faith, his love of trees, his language-creation, his status as a writer of fantasy or a survivor of the Great War or a mid-century writer, his compulsion to write even without hope of publication, his belonging to the Inklings or being a friend of Lewis's -- and insist it's the only one that's important is to seriously distort the picture.

Two final examples say a lot about this documentary.

First, one long scene (some fifteen minutes, out of a total running time over only about an hour) dramatizes the famous walk in which Tolkien and Lewis debated whether myths cd convey truth, which ended in Tolkien's assertion that Xianity was the one true myth. While v. well done, it contains two fairly major distortions. It presents Tolkien as doing almost all the talking while Lewis listens attentively, offering up a few respectful questions from time to time. This bears no resemblance to any account of Lewis as a conversationalist I've ever seen. It also portrays this as a dialogue, completely omitting Hugo Dyson, the third participant in that debate -- and assuming Dyson (a devout Xian but deeply bigoted against the Catholic church) held his tongue and had no influence on Lewis's decision to rejoin the Anglican church rather than become Catholic upon his return to Xianity is an iffy proposition.

Those changes can be defended on the grounds of dramatic license (after all, we only have Tolkien's account of this meeting, which doesn't include any indication of what Dyson said). But the second is far more problematic. Pearce has the actor playing Tolkien** repeat a passage from a 1958 letter to Deborah Webster Rogers: "I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories), and in fact a Roman Catholic." But this is deeply deceptive, for the very next sentence goes on add "The latter 'fact' perhaps cannot be deduced". That is, Tolkien felt that his Xianity was obvious to an attentive reader but his Catholicism was not, and Pearce seems to be manipulating the evidence to hide this fact.

All in all, a missed opportunity. By overstating his case, Pearce has weakened it. I think it's one of those times when, having picked up a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Pearce's first book (TOLKIEN: A CELEBRATION) did a great job of pulling together pieces that argued for taking Tolkien's Catholicism seriously as an important part of his make-up; it was a genuine contribution to Tolkien studies. But by the time of his second book (TOLKIEN: MAN AND MYTH), Pearce had begun to claim that only Catholicism held the key to understanding Tolkien, granting it a sort of magical skeleton key status that cd unlock all doors. And this documentary belongs more in the latter category than the former.

--JDR

current reading: THE WELL AT THE WORLD'S END (Kindle)

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*'Eternal Word Television Network': the 'Global Catholic Network'

**Kevin O'Brien, who does a wonderful job. Al Marsh, who plays CSL, does okay but has to struggle against type, being too tall, too well-dressed, and w. too much hair for the heavyset, chain-smoking, balding, disheveled Lewis.

Tolkien's Monsters (documentary)

So, thanks to a loan from my friend Jim Pietrusz (thanks, Jim), I've now seen the History Channel documentary TOLKIEN'S MONSTERS, part of a recent series with the overall title CLASH OF THE GODS*. It's relatively brief (about fifty minutes), with pretty good production values (except for the computer-generated dragon) and an array of experts, the most recognizable of whom were Michael Drout (a co-editor of TOLKIEN STUDIES), Dimitra Fimi (author of one of this year's finalists for the Mythopoeic Award), and Corey Olsen (the 'Tolkien Professor').** Their introductory statement makes great claims for Tolkien, identifying THE LORD OF THE RINGS as "The greatest myth of modern times" and "the most ambitious mythological journey since THE ODYSSEY".

The main thing that struck me as I watched the film was how the different pieces were assembled. They'd have an expert appear just long enough to say a line or two. These bits of film are preceded and followed by voiceovers by the narrator which set them in the context of the documentary's overall storyline, the point of which was to argue that Tolkien's two main influences were (1) The Bible and (2) World War I.*** Most of the film consists of two kinds of re-inactment (apparently by uncredited actors in Lithuania, if I interpreted the closing credits correctly): of scenes from Tolkien's book (heavily influenced in look-and-feel by the Peter Jackson movies) and scenes featuring an actor portraying Tolkien himself.

My main problem with the film is that I felt a disjunction between the script, which was clearly written by someone who'd done a good deal of research, and the images, which were clearly filmed by someone who'd never read the book. Thus sometimes the image or re-inactment on the screen did match the voiceover but still managed to be egregiously wrong, such as showing The One Ring with a crisscrossing pattern all over its outer surface. My favorite example was the film to match the narrator's description of Bilbo finding the Ring in Gollum's cave -- represented by showing an elderly hobbit walking with a stick or cane coming up to a big chest in a cave or tunnel, opening it, and looking within in amazement.**** In the words of my friend Anders Stenstrom in another context, "Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!"

That said, it's surprising that they got some details right which you wdn't expect, such as dressing their actor playing Tolkien in a coat that actually looks like one Tolkien wears in a famous photo (albeit that thise photo was taken decades after 1928, the year they claim he wrote 'in a hole in the ground'). Even better, they show 'Tolkien' writing with a dip pen, which was indeed his habit. And they get points for including 'The scouring of the Shire': the return to a ruined homeland. But they get so much visually wrong (portraying THE SILMARILLION as an ancient book having a scuffed Victorian-era cover, not having LakeTown be over water, representing the Battle of Five Armies by some footage of men riding warhorse, forgetting that the actor portraying Odin shouldn't have both eyes) that it's hard not to quibble*****

As for the ideas, some of them are solid enough, but their claim that Tolkien was influenced by The Bible more than any other work seems to me shaky -- are we really meant to think about Christ's Temptation in the Wilderness when Frodo's standing in the Cracks of Doom? Is that why they omitted any mention of Sam from the Mount Doom scenes? For that matter, what's up with the claim that Orcs are Capitalists ('thinly disguised'), their acts driven by interest in profit? Color me unconvinced.

In the end, the most haunting thing about this film was the presence of Tolkien himself, in the footage of the silent figure of the actor representing him, who occasionally looks up to make eye contact with the viewer. It was quiet disturbing when, instead of 'Frodo' fingering the Ring, at one point late in the film it shows 'Tolkien' with The One Ring in his hand. Not quite sure what the message was there, nor of the later scene of 'Tolkien' standing behind 'Frodo', silently observing him, immediately followed by one of 'Frodo' standing behind 'Tolkien', giving him the same silent scrutiny. Interesting, and unsettling.

Overall, I'd say this is not one of the best documentaries out there, but it's worth watching, so long as you remain skeptical about their sweeping claims re. Tolkien & Xianity, and don't mind casual errors here and there. I'll probably watch more in the series, if only to compare their treatment of classical and Norse myth with that of Tolkien.

--JDR

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*a rubric probably intended to capitalize on the recent film CLASH OF THE TITANS.

**others whom I did not know included Troy Storfjell, Scott A. Miller, Scott A. Leonard, John Davenport, Tracey-Anne Cooper, Thomas Finan, and Helga Luthers. Having also watched part of the same series' documentary on BEOWULF, I discovered many of the same folks appear in that film as well, which similarly derives a lot of its content not from the Old English poem but the gosh-awful Anthony Hopkins/Angelina Jolie movie from a year or so ago.

***they do have brief segments admitting to influence from BEOWULF, the Arthurian story (the Ring of Luned), VOLSUNGA SAGA, and KALEVALA.

****Later the exact same footage is re-used to show Bilbo finding the golden cup in Smaug's lair, where it fits a little better.

*****i.e., when they aggravate a person pet peeve of mine by showing a page of the BEOWULF manuscript and not having it be the actual one the voiceover is reading from, nor the part of the story they're discussing.

Tolkien Documentary (I)

So, I recently came across a Tolkien dvd I didn't think I'd seen before -- though at this point I've gotten the half-dozen or so that came out about the time of the Peter Jackson movies all mixed up. Some I know were good, others quite bad. But, as I say, after I while I forget which is which, or why the good ones were good, or what particular interesting bits were in which. So, I've decided to rewatch them all over the next few weeks and, if it seems worthwhile, to post a few notes here about each. Consider it a personal exercise in disambiguation.

And the first is the new one which just arrived day before yesterday: THE MASTER OF THE RINGS: THE UNAUTHORIZED STORY BEHIND J. R. R. TOLKIEN's THE LORD OF THE RINGS. With a name like this, and the thoroughly generic cover, it looks like one of the bottom-end among the Tolkien documentaries. But on the other hand, it's from Lion's Gate, who have done some good documentaries in the past.

Watching it, the thing I found most interesting is its complete lack of a narrative. With most documentaries, the filmmaker has an idea about the subject that he or she wants to get across, and he or she selects and arranges the material accordingly. Not here. Instead, MASTER OF THE RINGS offers a melange of episodes, each unrelated to the one before except that they're all in some way about Tolkien.

First, several Tolkien Society members talk about Tolkien's works -- and, to the filmmaker's credit, there's no attempt to make Tolkien fans look weird (as is all-too-often the case).

Second, a guy stands in front of houses where Tolkien lived in Oxford and talks some about Tolkien's life at the time. Unfortunately, his grasp on the details of Tolkien's biography is a little shaky; more on this latter.

Third, we have a too-long segment on what the film calls a larp but are really fantasy/medieval battle reenactments from a group called Dagorhir.

Fourth comes a segment where Humphrey Carpenter talks about Tolkien; although this only ran about three and a half minutes it was for me the highlight of the show. Plus, there were several further clips from the same interview later on. The best bits were (1) HC's observation that when Tolkien came to see his adaptation of THE HOBBIT Tolkien looked pleased at the parts from the original he'd retained and frowned at the parts Carpenter had changed, which pretty much says it all, and (2) HC on having a conversation with Tolkien: "he'd got bad at communicating, because he'd lived with it so long so he . . . never explained what he was talking about".

Fifth profiles a singer named Bob Catley who looks like David Lee Roth disguised as Ozzy Osbourne, who performs some songs from his album about Middle-earth.

Sixth features the pastor at Tolkien's neighborhood church, the one he attended when he lived up on Sandfield Road. This part was utterly charming; the guy obviously would have loved to have been there back in Tolkien's day. It's a v. simple little church; we do get to see where Tolkien usually sat, beside station #12 (= the twelfth station of the cross, I assume).

Seventh shows Roger Garland at work.

Eighth shows the Eagle and Child.

Ninth features Merton (quite untruthfully asserting that Tolkien was a "very popular professor . . . his lectures were always v. well attended") (HC chimes in to say no, not so much).

and finally Tenth briefly mentions the films, which were forthcoming at the time. Here the best quotes go to HC, who observes "the films will increase the size of his pedestal" and a TS member who worries that she "might not like it as much as I want to like it".

And periodically, punctuating it all, it returns to the guy standing in front of Tolkien's houses -- first at St. John Street and Alfred Street, then on Northmoor Road, then the house on Sandfield Road, the apartment at Merton, and finally at Wolvercote cemetery. You really think they would have gotten a guide who knew the details of Tolkien's life better than this fellow does -- he gets the general outlines right but makes a bad gaff at Sandfield Road when he points to the JRRT-lived-here plaque and claims that the dates given on it (1953-1968) are wrong -- in fact, he claims the Tolkiens went on living here right up to Edith's death in 1973. As my friend Anders once said in another context, "Wrong, wrong, wrong." Anyone can make a slip, I suppose, but this one seems particularly egregious since he's contradicting the true facts literally right in front of him. Ah well; I've seen worse distortions.

In the end, I decided that the 'assemblage' nature of the documentary was deliberate. The filmmaker I think wanted to show how people take Tolkien's work and make what they want out of it -- scholarship, music, mock-battles, painting, or whatever. The only connecting thread is Tolkien himself, and their joint love of his works.

Evaluation: you won't learn anything about Tolkien you didn't know before, but you might have an enjoyable time watching others convey the form their appreciation of his works takes. The best part are seeing the Oxford sites (including his favorite tree) and the HC bits; would that there were more.

--JDR

current reading: NAVIGATIO SANCTI BRENDAN